I wonder often how and why our nation divides itself into its ideologies of Democrat versus Republican. That division is, to a great extent, symbolic in its views and energized by mountains of presumption along with an almost war-like determination to separate rather than unite us. There seems to be no fine line between our stereotypes of the Red and the Blue. As a rule, most of us seem programmed to resent or even dislike the “other” color. We seem less and less willing or capable of focusing upon what we share or have in common. The adrenalin rush of self-righteous indignation seems just too enjoyable as a national boxing match so that we wear our prejudices like shining armor instead of the puerile, playground nonsense it really is.
This divide is becoming more and more pronounced and much edgier to a point at which the extreme and purely emotional, swaggering nonsense of people like Marjorie Taylor Green blindside us with a level of stupidity that stuns many and provides sick humor with racial slurs that take us back a hundred and fifty years.
The egomania of some in Congress has become more newsworthy in the media than our shared needs as a country. I cannot understand why there seems to be so little modesty and common sense left that the American political arena begins to resemble a playground devoted to childish insults and theatrical rubbish, instead of actual grown-up behavior and sacrifice that get something done for the good of the nation. Washington D.C. has become a childish playground for too many in Congress who haven’t yet seemed to grow up enough to realize that a show of ego as a contest needs to mature enough to make our nation a better place on the world stage. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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